Display systems create visual images from an electrical input image signal. Digital display systems, which use a quantized image signal, have many advantages when compared to the typical analog display system, including increased image rendition accuracy and the prospect of low-cost high-definition television implementation. However, without proper consideration for representation of the image's dynamic range, a digital system can induce new artifacts. Digital display systems can only display a finite number of intensity levels because the image data is quantized. Displaying an image using only a finite number intensity levels can detract from the overall image quality, causing visual artifacts such as false contouring or color shifting.
False contouring occurs when the quantization of an image signal causes contours to appear in an output image that do not exist in the input image. For example, the image of a smooth ball has a gradual color or intensity gradient. When the analog input is quantized, the smooth image gradient may be transformed into several large blocks of adjacent pixels, wherein each pixel in a block is assigned an identical image signal value. If these large blocks of adjacent pixels are not separated by a region of non-homogenous pixels, the blocks will cause a "stair-step" effect and the smooth curve of the original image will appear to be a series-of single-color flat surfaces.
Color shifting is a similar problem that occurs when the jumps in quantization levels do not occur at the same signal level for each color. For example, if the quantization levels are set so that the green component turns on first, followed by the red and blue components, a gray pixel will turn green, then yellow, before finally turning the desired gray. While color shifting is most evident when a pixel is initially turned on, as in the example above higher intensity pixels may have perceptible changes in color as the three color signals individually increment.
False contouring and color shifting artifacts may be increased by each quantizing or digital processing process including MPEG encoding or decoding, and de-gamma processing. A solution to the false contouring and color shifting problem is needed that does not significantly drive up the display system cost.